Top ten historic moments of 2004: no. 4

Top ten historic moments of 2004: no. 4

The 2004 MotoGP World Championship saw several veteran riders reach landmark milestones in their careers, most noticeably Alex Barros, who became the first rider in the 55-year history of the sport to clock up 200 premier-class Grand Prix appearances at the Gauloises Dutch TT in June.

Barros made his Grand Prix debut in the 80cc class at the Spanish GP at Jarama in 1986 aged just 15 years old after falsifying his date of birth to get around the minimum age limit in force at that time.
With his double century of appearances, Barros had now appeared in 32.4% of the 618 premier-class races that had been staged in the 55-year history of Grand Prix racing, finishing in the top ten 150 times and scoring points on 159 occasions - both of these figures being records.
Despite crashing out of the race at Assen, Barros would go on to take fourth overall in 2004 and in doing so extend his run of top-ten in the final premier-class championship classification to twelve successive seasons, just one short of the current record held by Giacomo Agostini. The Brazilian also boosted his career-points total to 1817, a tally bettered only by the great Mick Doohan.
Meanwhile at Assen, Max Biaggi made his 100th premier-class start – a feat Nobuatsu Aoki and Loris Capirossi would match at Donington Park and Estoril respectively later in the season.